Guild — The Tower

Guild denotes a recognized corporate body within the Tower authorized to hold floors, issue standards, and petition the Librarians for concordant status. The term is defined narrowly by the First Concordance, widened by the Seventh Concordance, and disputed in three subsequent recensions. A Guild may occupy a single floor or a discontinuous sequence of floors; it may be subordinate to another Guild or stand independent under direct Theoretical Jurisprudence Guild oversight.

Concordant Definition and Standing

Under First Concordance Article 2, a Guild is "any body of not fewer than seven persons holding a floor number in common and recognized by seal." The Seventh Concordance Annex 9 expanded this to include bodies "unsealed but in continuous petition for not less than forty years," a provision relied upon by the Margin Commentators Guild during its long pre-recognition period. The Third Concordance contradicts both, stating that standing arises only from "award of the bronze aperture," a device last struck in the year 881 of the downward count.

Sub-guilds present a recurring difficulty. The Theoretical Jurisprudence Guild counts among its subordinate bodies the Constructivist Guild, the Reflector Guild, the Guild of Groundskeepers, the Guild of Stonemasons, the Guild of Oneirology, and the Margin Commentators Guild. Whether these are Guilds in the full sense or merely offices is unresolved; the Compendium of Unheeded Dissents records a clerk of the Scribes' Guild of the Middle Floors who maintained for thirty-one years that they were "decorative subdivisions with no floor of their own."

Registry and Designation

The Inter-Guild Logistical Network Guild maintains the master registry of Guild designations. The Glasswrights' Guild appears therein as GL-Beta-7, a numbering that has never been explained and is presumed. Candle distribution to all registered Guilds is managed via the Inter-Guild Logistical Network Guild, and the Guild of Inter-Floor Messengers receives logistical coordination from the same office. The Horticultural Guild issued Guild Standard 114delta7b and Guild Standard 114-Δ-7b, two documents whose relation remains a matter of archival dispute; the later Guild Standard 115delta1a superseded both on the floors above the forty-second spiral but not below it.

Internal Governance and Feud

Most Guilds govern by internal ordinance reviewed at irregular intervals. The Guild of Stonemasons was a sub-guild of the Theoretical Jurisprudence Guild until its dissolution following the Collapse of the North Annexe in winter 904, when a load-bearing citation was found to have been misfiled. The Dialectic Guild and the Guild of Harmonic Theorists have maintained a feud since the Recension of Mirrors, concerning the proper pitch at which a Guild summons ought to be intoned. The Acoustical Cartographers' Guild was summoned once to adjudicate and declined, citing floor instability.

A visiting clerk may not bring a ladder taller than the door of the Guild Hall without written leave from two Librarians, a rule entered in the margin of Second Concordance and never repealed.

Scholarly Disagreement

The question of whether a Guild can catalogue subjects that do not exist on its own authority, or only through the Librarians, divides the scriptoria. The Guild of Formal Cartographers holds that any Guild may open a holding; the Guild of Oneirometric Cartographers insists that dream-based holdings require Theoretical Jurisprudence Guild countersign. The Third Concordance asserts the former; the Seventh Concordance the latter; the Ninth Concordance suspends the question pending the return of the expedition to the top.

"No Guild is sovereign, yet none is subordinate, and the seal proves only that a seal was made."

— Compendium of Unheeded Dissents, Folio 12, recto

Annexed Inventory of Named Guilds

The following bodies are recorded as Guilds or sub-guilds in the current recension held by the Inter-Guild Logistical Network Guild:

It is noted by the Scribes' Guild of the Middle Floors that the list itself has no floor number and is therefore, by the strict reading of First Concordance, not a Guild but a footnote wearing a Guild's clothes.